The image that defined the North

And not just the north but of working class communities across the country.

This scene is, I think Lower Byrom Street, but I could be wrong.

Location, Manchester, 1963

Picture; on the step, Manchester, 1963, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

In one of the six Alms Houses on Eltham High Street in 1851

The Alms Houses in 1909

For many of us the Workhouse with its stigma and the horrors that went with being shut up behind its grim walls is just a few generations away.

In my case it was my great grandmother who in 1902 gave birth to her last child in the Derby Workhouse Infirmary, and there after it was the Guardians of that place who kept a watching eye on my grandfather and his siblings while they grew up in various homes.

And it was these self same Guardians who placed great uncle Jack with a blacksmith to learn a trade, great aunt Dolly in service in Northumberland, grandfather in a Naval reformatory school and gave great Uncle Roger the choice of the same boot camp or a new start in Canada as a British Home Child.

Now the Workhouse has always been a refuge of the poor, and long before the 1834 Poor Law and the creation of the Poor Law Bastilles, seeking help from the parish was  accepted as one of the strategies most working families fell back on when times got hard.

But after 1834 the price was high, with families being separated on admission and at the mercy of petty regulations which reinforced the shame of poverty.

And of course it was the old who more than most would come to rely on the institution, often warn out after a life time of struggle and hard work with the prospect of their last few years separated from loved ones and the prospect of a pauper’s grave at the end.

And if it wasn’t the Workhouse or some other form of parish relief then it might have been a charity.

The Alms Houses numbered 224, in 1853

Like as not in Eltham this might have been one of the six alms houses in the High Street which had been built by Thomas Philipot in 1694 at a cost of £302 on part of a field called Blunt’s Croft.

They consisted of two rooms, one above the other, a wash-house and a small garden.  The average age of those living there in 1851 was 86 with Sarah Glazebrook at 84 and Elizabeth Blackman aged 62.

I suppose I should also have included Mary Inson who was a mere babe at 53 but she described herself as a lodger and I rather think cannot strictly be included.

Now a lot more research needs to be done to track all eight back across the years in Eltham.  None had been born here but I suspect all had passed most of their lives in the place.

Some at least I know, like old Thomas Foster who had been one of the blacksmiths.   His smithy stood to the west of Sun Yard nearer to the lane and was one of the features of the High Street.*

He was originally from Carlisle but was in Eltham by 1819 when his son was attending the first National School.

And in time I will discover more about  his wife Ann, along with the widows, Jane Rivers, Sarah Glazenbrook, Elizabeth Dean, Mary Fulgar and her lodger the 53 year old Mary Inson and George and Elizabeth Blackman.

I have no way of knowing how hard their lives had been or what struggles they endured in the alms houses or even what support and comfort their families were to them.

So I shall leave them on that spring day in 1851 in their cottages which looked out across the High Street to an empty field and wonder just what gardening Mr Foster did in his small garden behind the meadows.

Location, Eltham, London

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/heating-and-hammering-at-smithy-on.html

Picture; The Alms Houses from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, and detail of the High Street from detail of the land to the north of 1843 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

Living at 523 Barlow Moor Road in the 1940s

I am back with the memories of my friend Ann who grew up in a big house on Barlow Moor Road in the 1940s and 50s.

Her parents ran an undertaker’s business and along with descriptions of the house there are some wonderful insights into the work they did

"Like most houses in the 1940's, there was no central heating, and in winter, the only room which was warm was the kitchen. 

This was heated by the 'Range' a small open fire, which heated an oven, and a top oven for pans, and was covered in dark blue tiles. 

There was a trivet to stand the heavy cast iron kettle, and a coal scuttle which needed refilling several times a day, which meant going down the cellar for buckets of coal.  

Each side of the Range was fitted cupboards, and my Mum had her sewing machine in front of the window. 

She had trained as a dressmaker, and had worked in Manchester making and altering dresses, before she was married, and then had become a housewife’, as women did in 1928. 

She told me she had altered a dress for Tallulah Bankhead, (A famous actress at the time) and that it hadn't been cleaned, and smelt of sweat.

Entertainment at the time was the wireless, or the piano, or having friends round to play cards.

There wasn't a sink in the kitchen, but there was a small room at the side called a scullery, where the washing up was done. We didn't get a washing machine until about 1957, so all washing was done by hand, except for large things, like sheets and tablecloths. 

Our Laundry No was 1971, which incidentally became the year of our marriage.

Each Saturday evening at 5-o-clock, there had to be absolute silence, whilst my Dad checked his football pool results. He won 100 pounds one week, and bought my Mum a fur coat.

The workshop at the side of the house was the only room on ground level – all the other rooms were about 6ft above, and were reached by steps at the front and the back. 

There was a door from the driveway which led to a short passage, one side of which had a glazed partition, with the workshop to one side.

This was where Dad would varnish, or wax polish the coffins. Wax polishing was only done on the more expensive coffins, as it was very time consuming, and required several layers of wax being applied and rubbed in, until my Dad was satisfied with the finish. 

Then my Mum would line the coffins with kapok and taffeta.

When business was quiet, Dad would make spare coffins in different sizes, which could be stored in the cellar. They were stacked against the walls, and were perfect for playing hide and seek when my cousins came over to play.  

The door from the driveway was used for deliveries – we had bread, and meat delivered, once or twice a week.

The bread was from bakers opposite the Lloyds Hotel, but the butcher, called Frank came from  Heaton Mersey.

The internal stairs led up to a short corridor with two doors, one leading to the kitchen, and another, with stained glass panels led to the hallway.

In the hall were two doors which led to the front rooms, and a short passage, with a room under the stairs, called the pantry. This just held all the extra china that we used when we had visitors. 

My father had a box which held a most peculiar implement – he had been on a course to embalm bodies, (preserve them) and the box held a sort of pump to remove the blood and replace it with embalming fluid. I can't remember it ever being used, but it sat on a shelf in the pantry.  

The two front rooms were called the dining room, and the lounge. Just to differentiate them I think.

The lounge was used as a billiard room when I was very young, and had a full sized billiard table, but when my grandfather re-married when I was about seven, it must have been sold. and we used the room in the evenings, and when friends came my mother used to play the piano. I had lessons, but didn't get very far, I was much more interested in drawing.

The 'dining room' was used when people came to make arrangements for funerals. There was a large oak table covered in a brown chenille cloth with a fringe, and a carved oak sideboard.

Dad would take down details of the kind o funeral that was required and organize everything.

From the laying out of the body, the type of coffin, the white gown which covered them, the nameplate and brass handles, contacting a minister to take a service, the cemetery or crematorium for the disposal of the body, hiring of the hearse and cars, bearers to carry the coffin (usually the drivers of the hearse and cars) obituary notices in the newspapers, and finally a meal for those who had travelled a long way, often at the Southern Hotel."

© Ann Love, 2014

Pictures; by Ann Love

Merlewood House in the High Street and a hint of how the other half lived in the spring of 1851

Merlewood House in 1909

We are looking at Merlewood House which was one of those fine old houses Eltham did so well.

It stood just east of the present National Westminster Bank and was demolished when the road was widened and the bungalow shops were built.

It serves to remind us of the contrasts that Eltham threw up, for with Sherard House to its left it is the home of one of the well off in Eltham but stood close to Jubilee Cottages which had been built in 1833 and the interestingly named Ram Alley which in the 1850s and 60s housed some of our farm workers, labourers and tradesmen.

Merlewood had been home to Mr Richard Lewin from 1798 till 1853 and was ocuupied by a succesion of people who styled themselves "Gentry" including Caleb Mann Esq and Mr Howard Keeling who "left a benfaction to the National Schools."*

By contrast in Ram Alley lived Samuel and Mary Lambert and their three children.  He described himself as a labourer in 1851 and was one of the 21 men in Ram Alley who laboured on the land or the roads, and consitiuted 54% of those earning a living there.

Which is a nice introduction to a series of stories exploring the two sides of Eltham society.

Next; living in Ram Alley and Eagle House.


Pictures; Merelwood House , from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909,page 278

Lost on the streets of my city

Now one of the advantages of a misspent youth is that I am fairly familiar with the streets of Manchester.

From 1969 for three years as a student at the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street I wandered the city between lectures.

Back then the library was for the studious and so after Mr Wilson’s lecture on contemporary Soviet Government and before Mr Ripley on the Chartists or Trevor Thomas on Andrew Marvel I was off exploring my adopted home.

It took me to the Art Gallery and the Ref along with the Town Hall, the warren of streets that is now the Northern Quarter and down to the very unfashionable Castlefeld.

That said the knowledge is a bit frozen in time and I didn’t really get back to looking for the historic the interesting and the bizarre until the start of the last decade.

But despite that knowledge, the maps, and the street directories this image has defeated me.

The picture come to light through a project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".

I think we are on West Mosley Street which was sandwiched between Cooper Street and Mosley Street and vanished sometime before now.

I am fairly confident that there will be lots of theories and if we are lucky the answer.

In the meantime I will ask my friend Andy to look up his 1969 street directory and try to identify the firm on the board above that white building.

We shall see.

Location Manchester

Picture; of Manchester, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

Views from a Chorlton window …… sixty years ago

Yesterday I was looking out on Barlow Moor Road in the summer of 1960 in the company of Ann Love.

Now given that Ann lives in France, and I was in London in that summer of 1960, in the strictest sense we couldn’t be together, but she has shared with me some of the pictures she made.

Having sketched the interior of her home along with the roads around Chorlton, she took to capturing the view from a back bedroom window, across the garden  of her home at 523 Barlow Moor Road.

The images are now with the passage of sixty years quite unique given that what was her garden is now a car park. 

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; 523 Barlow Moor Road, 1960, from the collection of Ann Love

Strikes ….memories ….. and Miss Dannimac ….. more from the Manchester Jewish Museum

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single visit to a museum is never enough and must be followed by a second, third and fourth.

Window, 2026

Now, this is particularly true of the Manchester Jewish Museum which celebrates and records the history and culture of the Jewish community here and abroad.*

The Museum, 2025

I first discovered the museum soon after it opened in 1984 and followed that first visit with becoming a “Friend”, and have written extensively about it.**

But as so often happens other things get in the way, and I hadn’t been back for a very long time.

So, with a morning free I took the tram to Victoria and wandered up Cheetham Hill Road and was not disappointed.

I guess I was there for a couple of hours, learned a lot from the displays and enjoyed a series of conversations with some of the guides.

Of all the fascinating exhibits the one that drew me back was a page from The Waterproofer which was the official newspaper of the Waterproof Garment Worker’s Trade Union for July 1935 which recorded the end of 1934-5 strike.

The strike which was a response to the lowering piecework rates lasted nine months with the newspaper recording that the union would “not rest until every unscrupulous employer is dealt with and sweating abolished in the trade”. 

The Waterproofer, 1935

It is a story I was not over familiar with but it’s one I intend to follow up, and in that I may be helped by the memory maps of Jewish Manchester which are “a new digital resource where you can explore former sites of Jewish memory in the Cheetham Hill, Strangeways and Hightown areas of Manchester. Here you will find audio interviews, photographs, and information about more than 40 sites (we hope to include more in future) that consistently appear in people's recollections of these areas”.***

And then there is Miss Dannimac the “canvas Rain Coat … You’ve got to like Fashion to wear it”.  

Miss Dannimac. 2026

It was created by Ralph Levy who had “a vision of making rainwear not just practical but fashionable [and] new manufacturing techniques allowed Ralph to produce coats in lighter fabrics which were featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and modelled by fashion icons including Twiggy”.

And that I think is all for now, because while there is a great deal more in the museum, I think that should be for a visit.

Pictures; Thursday at the museum, 2026 & 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester Jewish Museum, https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/

**Manchester Jewish Museum, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Manchester%20Jewish%20Museum

***Waterproof Garment Workers Trade Union, A Memory Map of Jewish Manchester, https://jewishmanchestermemorymap.org/?feature_type=point&id=320